Is a sausage a sausage?
9th Dec 2025
Some would like to stop vegetarian sausages being labelled sausages. Calling an item vegetarian ham would be inexcusable. Ham is synonymous with pork. Likewise, bacon, steak and gammon.
A sausage is a loaded skin. It has a ubiquitous shape. The skin is made from collagen collected by scrapping animal hides. That is meat-based sausages. A vegan/vegetarian alternative for the skin is available.
Do pies have a parallel with sausages. A pie is a way of delivering food, wrapping and mixing with other ingredients. Many sausages contain a variety of ingredients along with herbs, spices, flavourings and preservatives..
Quite often something needs to be enough of something to be something. Some nations enforce a code that states that pork sausages must contain a minimum of 42% pork. At 42%, a sausage is less than half meat. There are more non-meat items in it than meat entrails. If less than half of the components of a sausage is not meat, is a meat sausage a meat sausage? Is it not a plant-based sausage that contains meat?
For many years I have had a bugbear with the way jewellers describe gold rings. One of these rings can be legitimately called a gold ring as it is 18ct (75% gold content). One of these rings ought to be called a brass ring as it only contains 9ct gold (37.5% gold content). If brass was fashionable, had cachet, and value it would most certainly be labelled as a brass ring. Does something need to be at least half of what it claims to be to be what it claims to be?
Personally, I think a vegetarian sausage has the shape, form, and general properties of a sausage. Others may not agree. See the page relating to what a chair is. A common philosophical problem. We will never all agree that something is something. Some things have more backers than others, a higher percentage classing something as something. In other words, you may find that 60% of those polled will class a vegetarian sausage as a sausage.
I will be intrigued to know what people suggest a vegetarian sausage, or a vegetarian burger ought to be labelled as. What do people propose calling them? I will always call a vegetarian pie a pie and a vegetarian sausage a sausage.
© IgnoranceParadox 2003 - 2025
Explore
Get Book
